How to Build a Smokehouse for Smoked Cheese and Meat

Reader Contribution by Mary Lou Shaw
Published on October 22, 2014
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Long before people had the ability to can or freeze their food, smoking was used to help preserve meat. It’s also used to give a wonderful smoky flavor to both meat and cheese. Although we preserve food by canning, freezing and storing it in our root cellar, a smokehouse allows us to flavor and preserve our food in a new way.

In this article, I will discuss how my husband built the smokehouse and firebox this year. This smokehouse will serve both as a cold smoker and as one that can cook food. Later in the winter, I will share our experiences with smoking our pork, poultry and cheddar cheese.

“Cold smoke” is an important concept because cooler temperatures give food time to dry out before heat seals in its moisture. Bacteria need a moist environment in which to multiply. The slow drying of food is therefore one method of preservation. The combination of salt and cool smoke prevents spoilage, repels insects and preserves meat.

I remember the description of Pa smoking meat in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book, “Little House in the Big Woods.” He used a smoldering fire at the base of an upright, hollow tree in which the meat was hung high inside. Smokehouses weren’t much more sophisticated than this in established homesteads in the late 1800s. Some state and metro parks have preserved these simple brick or wood smokehouses that were meant to have fires built inside them. These could cook and flavor foods, but because the fire was in the structure, it was difficult to keep the smoke cool.

Resources for building a smokehouse: As smokehouses are growing more popular today, people can buy commercially built ones or build simple ones consisting of a barrel connected to a firebox. My husband dedicated last winter to reading Adam Stanley’s and Robert Marianski’s, Meat Smoking and Smokehouse Design, as well as Frank G. Ashbrook’s Butchering, Processing and Preservation of Meat, before building the smokehouse that I describe in this article. Many other variations on this design are shown in these books.

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